Newton’s Laws of Motion

We had a lot of fun demonstrating the "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" in Physical Science. We did a lab called "Quite a Reaction" that involves cutting a thread that is holding a rubber band with a marble in its bend. It's all held together on a piece of cardboard with thumbtacks and the cardboard is sitting on 6 straws to allow movement of the cardboard. This document has the directions for the students and this one is the lab sheet they glued into their notebook.

The action and reaction happen so quickly that it's hard to see well, so we took some slow motion video of the experiment. Recording it this way made it so much easier to see.

The other activity we did with Newton's Laws of Motion was a Breakout EDU. This was the first Breakout that I did with this class. I had bought two Breakout boxes and this gave me access to the breakouts on their website, breakoutedu.com. There are also free breakouts available, even if you don't have a subscription.

There is a breakout on Newton's Laws of Motion that involves motion graphs that students have to interpret, a card sort of motion events that students have to classify as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd law, and some momentum problems to solve. As students complete the tasks, they discover combinations to multiple locks on one small and one large box. The kids loved it. Both groups were able to breakout before the end of the class. The boxes had candy and some prize cards that students work on earning throughout the year.